


In Another World

by avulle



Category: Firefly
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-10
Updated: 2015-02-10
Packaged: 2018-03-11 11:53:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,783
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3326399
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/avulle/pseuds/avulle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which there is no Mal, Zoe, Simon, or River, and Kaylee does not like pretty things.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Another World

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger warnings: Implied sexual assault.

Inara knew of Kaylee before she ever met her.  Long, long before.  It wouldn’t be much of an exaggeration to say that everyone this side of the rim knew Kaylee’s name.  She was everyone’s last resort.  You didn’t go to her because something was just little squiggly, or your shuttle pulled a little to the left.

You went to her because your transport ship’s life support went out for seventeen seconds while your thrusters damn near sent you into the sun, and no one else can figure out why.  You went to her because a reaver got their hands on your engine before you could eject them out the side airlock, and you’ve got a special attachment to the ship, so you can’t just scrap it because there’s something that smells suspiciously like feces mixed with burnt human flesh fucking everywhere (and after cleaning it, nothing works right).

Oh, and you’ve got money.  You’ve got piles, and piles of money.  It’s a side effect of the fact that she can always get a ship back in working condition, regardless of the cause, scale or source of the damage.  No ship is ever totalled becuase if you’ve got money and you’ve got Kaylee.  She’ll can rebuild your entire ship around the one still-blinking light on the dashboard, and it’ll run exactly like it did before you crashed it.

 

Inara was three years into the academy, still halfway through learning about history and mathematics, when Kaylee simply—appeared.  There was no other word for it.  She did not come onto the stage slowly, starting as an apprentice, or maybe even begin by opening a traditional shop.

No, she simply came to Sihnon and was known.  Known in the way the priestess of her house, Madame Katherina Setta was known.  The way the priestess of every house was known.  Without Inara even being aware of it, when she thought of mechanics, she thought of Kaylee—without anyone being aware of it, whenever anyone though of a mechanic, they thought of Kaylee.

To Inara’s knowledge (as sad and limited as it may have been at age 15, when she was beautiful but not yet graceful, smart but not yet insightful), the only organization capable of doing that was the Guild (but what a preposterous idea).

But no one knew anything about her.  Nothing beyond her preferred moniker—Kaylee.  No one even knew her full name.

It was only after she became a household name, only after everyone seemed to know who she was that Kaylee started making news.  And it was only then that Inara became aware that Kaylee was a little girl—younger, even, than her.

Until that moment, when she saw a little girl, almost certainly half the size of what could only be the senator of Sihnon, in dirty coveralls and grease stained cheeks, on the front page of every newspaper in circulation, it had never occured to Inara that Kaylee was female—let alone a child.

But she was.  And it almost seemed as if no one realized how incredibly bizarre that was.  The article with that picture—and it was the first to show her picture, she’s checked—spoke long and in great detail about the great service she had done for the alliance (for a price, of course) when she fixed a battleship after it had been (literally) torn to pieces by reavers (saved the Alliance billions).

And, nowhere in this article did it so much as reference Kaylee’s age.  It didn’t mention where she received her training or her knowledge or even admit that it may be even slightly bizarre that a little girl from some rim planet (because if she was from the Core, someone would have surely known).  But it didn’t call her a genius either, so Inara’s interest in the girl was decidedly piqued.

However, as the months passed, nothing really changed.  Kaylee had started as the best mechanic in the ‘verse, so she certainly couldn’t go up, and she most assuredly was not going down.  After she saved the Alliance from well-and-certain-doom (or so the articles liked to claim) the fourth time, they stopped bothering putting out the articles altogether because really—no one cared.  Everyone implicitly understood.  This was the way of the world.  Kaylee could fix anything.

So Inara’s curiousity waned.  Kaylee did not seem like something that could be known, and Inara was never one for desiring what she could not have, so Inara elected to no longer be curious.

 

Inara graduated from the academy at the (average) age of eighteen.  Neither strikingly early nor strikingly late.  

In fact, she became a full-fledged companion exactly 18 years after the date of her birth (a more uncouth person may have referred to it as her birthday).  Her progression through her classes (in which she was above-average, but did not excel) was not particularly unusual.  She did not to appear to rush through or drag her feet through her classes.

So much so, in fact, that her graduation day lying on her birthday was noticed only in retrospect, and, for a great number of years, was written off as coincidence.

It was on the day of Inara’s graduation (her 18th birthday), that she learned the first new thing she had learned about Kaylee in three years, since the first article that had shown she was a little girl.  And that was that Kaylee would provide her services free of charge to any Companion who requested them.  She would cross the ‘verse to fix a loose bolt, without requesting a single credit (or a favor or a session).  The last companion to request that, however, found herself summarily ejected from the guild (for a completely unrelated violation) and forced to make her living on a border-planet because no one in the core would take her.

She also learned that Madame Fei Yen Matterson (priestess among priestesses, running the guild in all but name) was known to only trust her ship in Kaylee’s hands, and had, on numerous occasions, shipped her across the ‘verse (in the Madame’s own ships, of course) to fix things like how her air conditioner cooled two degrees below what it was set to (exactly two degrees below what it was set to), that her steering pulled a little to the left, and that her air lock stuck a little the first time she opened it after sealing it to go off-world.  The last of which became a three week trip for which Kaylee dropped a job for Johnson Richards, the seventh richest man in the ‘verse, with only half of day left on it.  

It was also rumored (if companions deigned to participate in such lowly things as spreading rumors) that it was Madame Matterson who had evicted the first (and last) companion to take advantage of Kaylee’s willingness to cross the ‘verse at the whim of a companion.

In fact, Madame Matterson’s primary ship seemed to have a mildly malfunctioned cooling system, steering column and airlock mechanism almost exactly annually—but nobody dared spread rumors about that.  They certainly didn’t spread rumors how it always happened around the end of September, and how Kaylee came into existence in Sihnon in late October.

Spreading rumors like that would have been a tragically bad idea.

 

Inara and Kaylee’s relationship developed purely by chance when Inara was 20 (well-known in Sihnon but not yet elsewhere), because when Inara contacted her to fix the increasingly spotty steering of her shuttle, she grew impatient with Kaylee’s attempt to clean herself and decided to do it for her.  It was not common for a client to be bathed by a companion, but it was not unheard of either, so Inara was naturally good at it (although not spectacular).

They were in Kaylee’s shop, by a very dirty sink, and Inara used an only mildly cleaner washcloth (which she had to wash before using it on Kaylee or else she would have never gotten anywhere).  After she was finished, Kaylee gazed at her in the way only the clients she black-marked did.

So, from then on, once a week, Inara made a habit of going to Kaylee’s shop (Friday, 3pm standard time), and doing it again.  If Inara noticed how the new washcloth beside the (still dirty) sink was worth more than the entire building,  she never mentioned it.

She stopped bothering with excuses after the third time, and she stopped being only good after the seventh time (if Kaylee told her those were her favorite numbers while under duress of having a very soft washcloth pressed against her temple, then that was just a coincidence).

Kaylee became steadily less clothed as time went on (but neither bothered to comment), and therefore Inara washed more and more of her (and heard more and more of what Kaylee seemed to babble whenever a washcloth was pressed against her skin) as time went on.  On the twelfth visit, Kaylee shuffled her feet, closed the door, flipped the sign to closed and took off all of her remaining clothes before sitting back into the stool she added to the room after the fourth time (Inara blinked once before wetting the washcloth and beginning with Kaylee’s left pinky).  By the fourteenth time, it was known throughout the core that Kaylee closed shop early on Fridays (as well as known to most of the rim).

By the seventeenth time, Inara stopped bothering to pretend to not be interested, and fucked Kaylee up against the sink (before meticulously cleaning things that were no longer just grease and engine oil).  The eighteenth time, Inara let Kaylee return the favor (neither commented on the mysterious appearance of a cot in the room).  The twenty-third time, Inara stayed the night, and stopped taking clients on Saturdays and Sundays.

The shop stopped being open for the weekends around then, too.  If the alliance lost several million credits because a ship just couldn’t get fixed in time, neither of them could bring themselves to care.

The thirty-third time, Kaylee invited Inara to come with her to fix a lightbulb in Madame Matterson’s shuttle’s bathroom.  By the thirty-fourth time, Inara was informed that she needn’t keep taking clients to keep the Guild’s approval as a companion (Inara kept taking clients anyways).  Around the thirty-sixth time, Inara stopped bothering to go back to her apartment for anything other than sessions with clients, and slept on Kaylee’s lumpy cot in the dirty little shuttle (that Inara suspected was older than Madame Matterson) that Kaylee called home.

Just before the fortieth time, Inara and Kaylee went shopping and redecorated the inside of the dirty little shuttle (The Black Canary, according to Kaylee) in maroons, browns and dark blues (if it looked like Inara’s apartment, well that was just a lucky coincidence).  Just after the fortieth time, they remembered that they forgot a bed and got one (if it was the same size as the lumpy cot that it replaced was, then that was because they had already gotten sheets, and it’d be a waste to not use them).

Three days before the forty-first time, Inara cried in Kaylee’s arms for the first time, and didn’t take clients for a month (coincidentally, Kaylee also didn’t do any repairs that month).  The day of the forty-first time was the first time Kaylee ever bathed Inara.  Two days after the forty-first time, a very particular client’s shuttle burned up re-entering the atmosphere, and neither the culprit nor any intact piece of the client’s body was ever found.

The morning before the forty-fifth time, Inara took her first client since what Kaylee called “the incident” and Inara didn’t call anything at all, came home and cried into Kaylee’s arms (for the thirteenth time), and then broke the bed, the tea table and the sink (with various parts of Kaylee).  The day after the forty-fifth time, they bought the same size bed as before (because they didn’t really need the extra space), but a much larger, prettier sink.

Three days before the fifty-second time, Kaylee gave Inara a ring made from bits of shuttle, ship and rocket (and maybe some other things Inara wouldn’t recognize) that was remarkably smooth and looked very little like what it was made from.  After being given it, Inara only took it off to take sessions with clients (and even then, she hung it on a hook by the door in plain view of the bed—no matter her orientation, due to creative placement of mirrors).

Two days before the fifty-second time, Inara gave Kaylee a plain titanium band.  Kaylee never takes it off again (but Inara makes sure to always wash around it and under it).

The day of the sixty-third time, Kaylee and Inara take a trip to Kaylee’s homeworld (that should take four weeks, but takes eight days, instead) in their shuttle (which shouldn’t have the fuel for it, but does).

The day after the sixty-fourth time, Kaylee takes Inara to an alley in the largest city on the largest moon of the planet and tells her how she and Madame Matterson met.  Inara gets the most angry she’s ever been literally sees red.  

Kaylee doesn’t cry until they’re curled up (as they must be, because the bed is only slightly larger than the average desk) in their bed.  Two days after the sixty-fourth time, Inara calls Madame Matterson (because of course Kaylee has her personal contact information) and thanks her more sincerely than she’s ever thanked anyone in her life (Madame Matterson doesn’t say anything, and they both hang up without exchanging another word).

Three days before the sixty-fifth time, Kaylee explains what happened on the trip to Sihnon with Madame Matterson, and Kaylee’s appearance when Inara was fifteen makes sense (she learns that Kaylee was eleven, and that her birthday is July 3rd).

The day after the sixty-fifth time, Inara buys Kaylee a dress (with flowers because Kaylee likes flowers), perfume, and everything elegant and beautiful that Kaylee was so impressed with about her when they first met.

Two days after the seventy-first time, Kaylee finally wears it (the first time she’s worn a dress since she was eleven), along with all the other pretty things that Inara got her, and they dance in their shuttle for hours.  Inara tells her she looks like a companion (because it’s the highest praise she knows), and Kaylee blushes and denies everything.

The day after the eightieth time, Kaylee and Inara go dress shopping, and then Kaylee spends the next week tinkering with their closet so it can fit all their new dresses.

The day of the eighty-fifth time, Kaylee tells Inara she doesn’t have to go to see Madame Matterson for September 29th anymore because of Inara, but she wants to go anyways.  They wear dresses every day that they wear anything because Kaylee likes being pretty (and if half the dresses are ripped, stretched or torn by the time they get back, they just to get to go dress shopping again).

Three days after the eighty-sixth time, Madame Matterson shakes Inara’s hand, Kaylee tightens a bolt, and Madame Matterson reminds Inara of what she said last time (Inara continues to take clients, once more).

Three days before the one-hundred-fifth time, Inara and Kaylee wear matching white dresses and get walked down the aisle by (the now-retired) Madame Katherine Setta and (the will never retire) Madame Matterson while one hundred and four of their closest friends look on (Inara never tells Kaylee how many companions she paid to attend to make that happen).  Inara and Kaylee dance in their very pretty dresses.

By the one-hundred-tenth time, the Alliance is begging Kaylee to come back, and Inara has over sixty requests waiting in her inbox for a session (she is now well-known in Sihnon and three neighboring planets).

By the one-hundred-eleventh time, Inara is offered a position as the priestess (to replace Madame Rebeck, who replaced Madame Setta as the head of her house).  She refuses, and they celebrate by vanishing for another month (in which they wear and ruin pretty dresses on a regular basis).  They buy their beds and sinks from the supplier.

By the two-hundred-seventeenth time, Inara has taken Kaylee out in her dresses, heels and fancy perfumes and danced with her in every world in the core (Inara still tells Kaylee she’s as pretty as a companion, and Kaylee still denies everything).

Around the three-hundredth time, Inara is known in every world in the core (and in most of the rim), and has people that spend weeks in transit for a session with her (people are starting to realize that Inara’s graduation date was not a coincidence).


End file.
